Skift Take: Cape Town has a unique set of challenges, but it's thinking smart about the assets it has in order to grab the share of visitors it thinks it deserves.

— Jason Clampet

Editor’s Note: Skift is publishing a series of interviews with CEOs of destination marketing organizations where we discuss the future of their organizations and the evolving strategies for attracting visitors. Read all the interviews as they come out here.

Earlier this winter Enver Duminy, CEO of Cape Town Tourism, visited Skift’s office in New York City along with Velma Corcoran, Executive Manager Marketing for the organization, to discuss the city’s tourism marketing efforts.

During the conversation we touched on the challenge of selling a long-haul city escape in a region that’s known for being a bucket list safari destination, as well as how African destinations try to educate potential travelers in order to overcome stereotypes and lack of basic geography skills.

Most notably, Duminy discussed the role currency fluctuations play in travel planning and what destinations can do to better position themselves to react better to changes.

An edited version of the interview appears here.

Skift: You did well after the World Cup. Not every destination does well after a big event. What do you think Cape Town did post-World Cup or during or in the lead up that made it pay off in the way that planners of these events dream of?

Enver Duminy: I think if we look at what the World Cup did, it just started showcasing Africa and South Africa beyond the perception of safari. I think that’s the first thing. We looked at it as a big opportunity to create a lot more awareness of the changing landscape of South Africa. 20 years before or at least 15 years before the World Cup there was still this whole thing of it’s a new destination, still a lot of uncertainty. Yes, it’s aspirational but what is beyond that? Most travelers still looked at Africa as safari. So when we look at World Cup it became just, again, an opportunity to create a lot more awareness by leveraging a global event. You would not get air play to that value if you had to do something else.

But if you also look, then, at what we did differently, I don’t think we did anything significantly differently. The big focus was about legacy and exit projects from the World Cup.

Skift: Such as?

Duminy: If we look at making sure there was football fields that were built within communities that were disadvantaged. Creating programs of learning and educating future coaches, particularly looking at football. There was also fast tracking of a lot of infrastructure that would have taken a lot longer if it wasn’t for the World Cup. So we’re looking at creating accessibility from impoverished communities into the central business districts, looking at integrated rail as well as bus services.

Then from a tourism perspective it was just the opportunity, again, to show the destination as this metropolis. There’s a thriving economy, there’s investment opportunities. When people came out for the World Cup they could also do business. This was great opportunity. They were speaking to markets that, traditionally, would not be speaking to because of the participants within the World Cup itself. That gave us opportunity to actually market the destination to them.

Questions and concerns around safety were dealt with. It’s kind of just trying to change perceptions. It’s still a distance from market and from our key source market. That is one of the biggest challenges for us. UK, U.S., Germany, in that order, are still, from an international tourism perspective, still the biggest drivers for tourism to South Africa and to Cape Town. We’ve always been seen as a leisure destination and specifically over summer. That is one of our biggest challenges. How do we start to get more people to travel to Cape Town over our winter period, which is not as cool or as miserable as in some other places.

If we look at the time that people have available to travel now, it’s getting shorter. And the cost of travel is becoming a lot more expensive. So those are all factors that can make people say yes, I want to go there, yes, it’s great and everything’s aspirational but I’d rather stay at home or I’ll do a staycation in my country, et cetera, et cetera.

Now that we’ve made the wins about the destination how do we create conversion? So that’s what we’re focusing on over the next three to five years is creating conversion by still continuing to be getting authentic storytellers and then making sure that we provide the right content to the consumer at the right time that leads to the sale, which was something that we’ve never done before. Even if I look at it from a national tourism perspective, they don’t focus on conversion. Theirs is still continuing to be about the wins.

However, our business is completely different. As Cape Town tourism, we are an industry association. We’re similar to NYC & Company in that we’ve got over 1,200 businesses as members. That’s kind of how we are constituted. Then we provide destination marketing services for the city.

As Cape Town tourism we’re kind of slap bang in the middle of the visitor, the industry, and local government. Our challenge is how do we make sure, over the next 3 years, that we increase demand for the destination, but specifically over the winter period, and at the same time try to generate income.

Skift: What’s been the most effective method of either increasing more visits from the UK, the U.S., and Germany or from other destinations that you’re trying to get into?

Duminy: I think, if you look at the numbers, it’s that even the rate of growth from our key source markets was small. It’s a bigger base. Whereas, we’ve seen bigger increases from China. Asia has increased, South America. So mostly from the EU, excluding Russia, we have seen increases but I think over probably the last six months the biggest challenge for us has been the effect of Ebola and the perception that it affects the entire African continent.

Skift: I apologize. I blame our schools.

Duminy: I think also that we will definitely feel that, specifically if you look at when those markets travel to the destination. Hopefully, when we get the latest numbers we’ll be able to see the size of the impact. We also noticed that there has been a change through a lot more independent travelers. Yes, a group may be affected but sometimes the independent traveler makes up his mind for himself and then kind of goes to a destination. So we may see that play itself out now when we get the latest numbers.

I think also one thing that plays in our favor is exchange rate. As much as it does effect our economy but for tourism it’s a good thing, especially for international travel. Why that is also good because then domestics will not travel overseas because of unfavorable rate for them. They will then do domestic travel. What will be interesting for us when we unpack the numbers now over our high season is to see where the shift has been.

Part of what I’m asking my team to look at is the effect of exchange rates and having exchange rate strategy. We start looking at markets because when you do that in finance and economics you can always build it in and you can’t do that. From a tourism perspective, we need to do the same thing. Yes, it’s all normal marketing intelligence and all those things but when you look at markets also look at exchange rate. Exchange rate, even within the destination, affects different people within different social standings.

So if I look at youth travel, they’re not affected by exchange rate. They’ll go to a destination and then when they’re there they actually see the value for money, whereas an elderly couple who’s a lot more tight-lipped on the purse, exchange rate actually does have a influence on the decision of where I go to because I want to get maximum value. It’s about understanding that and then making sure you can then get the right packaging and pricing to start creating that conversion.

For us, hopefully we will start to see what that impact is but the growth for us, specifically after the key markets, has purely been because, again like Velma says, we’ve capitalized on the pure exposure we get from those markets. I think that the trade themselves have to understand the destination much better but I think the challenge is always trying to get them as much updated content and experiences. I think sometimes they’ll still sell the same thing in the same way and the consumer has changed. Also, from a consumer perspective, we know that they’re not always going to the trade, shopping around. They’re basing it on social media, what others are saying, experiences, and they’re making up their minds. I think with the value of her team the biggest focus and shift had been saying how can we leverage social media a lot more.

Skift: How do you think your shift of the focus from the trade to other outlets has fared?

Velma Corcoran: Our budget is minuscule. So we don’t have any money to do any sort of above the line advertising programs. We don’t even have money for joint marketing agreements. We’ve had to be really really smart about how we work. I think the key things that we’ve done that we’ve shifted in the last while is I think in the last three years our relationship with South Africa Tourism, which was previously not as strong, has become really really strong in the market. So we really leverage off what they do and we are quite smart about constantly feeding them with information about what’s new in Cape Town, what’s cool, sending them images, whatever so that it makes it really easy when they’re selling South Africa to put Cape Town in.

Skift: Because they have the content …

Corcoran: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Their last TV ad that they did, it looked like it was an ad for Cape Town. It was great for us and a lot of other people were quite unhappy but that is from us being relentlessly pursuing that relationship and then, in the various markets that they’re ads read, building our relationships with the country managers.

The second thing that we work hard on is media hosting. What we try and do is, if any key media come to Cape Town, is really to help them uncover the various layers of the destination. We’ll obviously help in terms of experiences, et cetera but we’ll meet with them, we’ll try and figure out what story angles they want to cover.

If you’re more focused on food, how do we hook you up to key foodies? How can you go and spend the day with a blogger and they can show you their version of Cape Town? So really having to uncover those layers.

We were probably one of the first destinations that starting doing blogger trips with the hashtag. Now everybody does it. It’s become a bit … I don’t know how credible they are anymore. I think what we have realized is that, as a DMO, we’re not the best people to tell the story because that’s our jobs.

So we’re not as authentic as other people. So really working with influences … and I think the influencers have moved beyond the travel blogger because I think people only really read travel blogs when they’re planning their trip. Working with lifestyle bloggers, working with Instagram, working with whoever to try and get them to tell the stories … and actually, even working with Instagram we’ve now realized that what you can’t do is the sort of traditional Instameet doesn’t work anymore because then you’ve got five guys who all take pride in what they’re doing but they’re sort of competing for the same picture. So how do you help send them on different journeys so that they can create the best pictures?

Then, in terms of working with a trade, what we realized is the trade are lazy. The trade want money. There was while where we would go to trade shows and we’d have terrible meetings with the trade because they’d be like okay so let’s have a joint-marketing agreement and you give us $50,000, and we’re like we don’t have $50,000, and they’d be like okay well why are you meeting with us? Lots of those meetings.

Skift: In terms of being smart, I just want to return to the thing you were talking about. Currency and exchange rates. Is that something that you’ve seen other DMOs do or you have a history of doing there or is it just your background, you’re like okay we need to think about this smarter?

Duminy: It’s my background. One of the things we have done in order to address winter and seasonality is to start looking at creating a seasonality filter of the markets. The point is to market to the UK. They majority of them will not travel in their summer, when it’s our winter. So what are the reasons, then, to create that travel and understanding each of the markets because people’s budgets are a lot tighter. You need to understand fluctuations and being able to then measure those fluctuations is quite cool when it’s relevant and the timing, specifically.

I don’t notice any other DMOs that do it. If they were smart, I assume they would be doing that anyway but I think our challenge is that the distance from market. You need to make it as appealing as possible for the conversion. I think you said in the beginning is that we’re willing to try anything and then see if it works.

We also do our own research. We’re created our own seasonality index. So visioning the impact of seasonality and then determining what we could shift why and how to make differences. For us, it’s just about trying to doing things … I wouldn’t say smarter. I think we just do things differently because of the challenges we face and I think with smaller budgets you are a lot more picky about what you invest in.

I think it’s because we now are being seen in place on those lists against the bigger competitors people start looking at us and say well what are you doing that’s making people come. I think once people come to the destination it actually sells itself. It’s just amazing when people get there. They are blown away by what their perception was to the experience. That is important for us because, as much as we can do all the advertising and the selling and promotion, it will fail in comparison when people get to the destination that’s not looking up to their promise. Right now it’s exceeding that promise. It’s just a part of our own end destination.

Skift: You said perception a couple of times and I think that Africa, as a giant continent with many many countries very far apart, has perception challenges, especially in the U.S. Ebola, you mentioned, even though I think probably Florida is closer to where Ebola broke out than South Africa. What’s the most effective means of not necessarily battling against perception but changing perceptions?

Duminy: I think that it’s through continuous education. What we do is we do very active communication but it’s also proactive communication. It’s about educating trade consumers, using social media, our platforms to start monitoring that because if you just allow it to start happening and you don’t even gauge your audience, you lose out on those opportunities.

When you get here and you start seeing the trend in the narrative. You start seeing that there’s opportunity. I can bring my family the next time I come. So, for us, it’s all about making sure we monitor media quite often, it’s about seeding life stories and then letting communications grow organically. So we will seed a thread and then just let it organically grow instead of trying to curate things too much. That’s where you start. You have to deal with the good and the bad, whether it’s racism, Ebola, safety, the global world has the same issues.

Skift: You mentioned money a couple of times about being smart with budgets. Do you think that there’s a better model for a DMO out there that just nobody’s been able to pull off yet or that you guys are working towards?

Duminy: Something that we started focusing now on is saying how do we change our model. A limitation for us is not to become independent from government funding or from private sector funding. It’s about finding the right level of matching. I think that’s always that challenge is that with membership organization people want to pay to deliver on a specific expectation. At local government they need to show how we use tax dollars and it’s about balancing that against other needs like safety, health, and everything else.

If you can demonstrate value, I think it makes the whole emotional conversation a lot easier than traditional way we always deal it of begging for money, saying will this justify our existence, which lots of DMOs have to do now. Can you justify because the relevance of DMOs, like Velma said, it’s like who listens to a DMO? It’s what is it, what value do you add? It’s about finding that within the content do you share with people and then making sure that the end destination experience surpasses what you’re promising to the world. That is a thing where we see some of the shifts for ourselves.

Skift Take: Abercrombie & Kent may have been one of the first companies to capitalize on experiential travel but it has since become a mainstream phenomenon sought after by travelers of all spend levels. Companies across all sectors can learn from Abercrombie & Kent's decades-long success.

— Samantha Shankman

The global growth of tourism, limitless access to information, and the democratization of travel media fueled by social media have led to an intense demand for deeper travel experiences.

Travel brands across all sectors are developing products that are more personalized, better aligned to local culture, and inspiring for consumers on a path of self discovery through travel.

However, long before Asian airlines touted local culture in international ads and hotels brought neighborhood coffee shops into their lobbies, Abercrombie & Kent was building experiential travel experiences for a sophisticated and affluent customer base.

Where Kent has adapted the company’s approach is in how he markets the adventure travel company’s tour packages, the company’s response to global health and safety crises, and the Internet’s impact on consumers’ planning and booking process.

Skift recently spoke to Kent about everything ranging from his company’s early days and the introduction of new products to his hate for unbundling requests and future adventure travel trends. An edited version of the interview can be read below.

Skift: You’ve said before that you invented experiential travel. How did this come about?

Geoffrey Kent: I started the company in Kenya when I was a very young guy. In 1962, I developed a very unusual way to go on a safari, which was to shoot animals with a camera instead of a gun. Then I wanted to put the travelers in tents, but nobody wanted tents if they weren’t hunting.

It was quite a hard sell, but it worked because I put in caviar and ice machines. We had indoor toilets and showers, refrigeration, the best chefs and the best wine.

What I wanted to do was to have the contradiction of looking at hippos in the Mara River one minute and having caviar and champagne the next. There was this whole contradiction of life, which today is called experiential travel. I invented experiential travel. I’ve always been adventurous and I’ve always liked to live well so I put the two together.

Skift: The product began with a very wealthy customer base and has stuck with it. What was the idea behind introducing the A&K Connections product?

Kent: I’ve always kept Abercrombie & Kent at the upper level. A lot of people come to me and say you have to go for the mass market. I say, “No. No. No.” I think it would be too tiring.

The real reason that I introduced A&K Connections was because I got so fed up with everybody saying the trips were great but so expensive. I wanted to come with a product that was a really really good value. It’s approximately 30 percent less than the ordinary Abercrombie & Kent trip but I made sure that the guides are still outstanding.

Skift: Travelers at all levels today are seeking out a more authentic experience, whether it’s through a local guide, meeting locals, or eating regional produce and meals. What do you think is driving demand for experiential travel?

Kent: I’m amazed it took me 45 years to get this really popular. I asked, “What’s wrong with people? This is such a good thing.” I think that I should be credited with sticking to an idea.

What’s driving it today is that people have gotten much, much fitter. There are people all the way up into their 80s now who are still very actively fit. People aged 80 today are like people aged 50 in the 1960s. As a result, they have the money that they didn’t before. We also had the baby boom.

Above all, they’ve all been successful business people and traveled to almost every city. When I first started in the 1960s, Americans hadn’t traveled before and they wanted to see Paris. Now they’ve done that. Cities are done. Take me to Iceland, Antarctica or Kilimanjaro. That’s what they want to do.

What’s also really driven business are families. These days both partners work and they have kids at all different ages. The only thing that really keeps them all together is a trip. It’s not going to Paris where they get room service and watch movies. It’s diving in the Galapagos or horseback riding through Botswana. The activities are the key thing to keeping the family together.

Skift: What’s the business model behind Abercrombie & Kent?

Kent: We’re the only company that has 52 local offices around the world. Everyone says that they can arrange an adventure in South Africa, but what they really are is book publishers. At the end of the day, they use an agent. We will grow to 3,000 employees this year.

Think of it like a factory. The sales end of Abercrombie & Kent is like a show room, not the factory. Operating companies manufacture the Mercedes and they can change it, tailor it.

Everybody wants bespoke holidays today. Group travel is still a booming business, but there’s a huge rise in bespoke travel. You can only do bespoke travel if you own the operating car.

Skift: What does Abercrombie & Kent do to support sustainable tourism both for the environment and local culture?

Kent: I always have this big word – sustainable – in my head. You need to sustain community. You need to sustain the environment. You can only do that the good old capitalist way — with money.

You can’t ask people to do things from their own good will. They need cash. Tourism provides money. You can’t tell people that they should love and hug an elephant each day. It’s about the income that they’re going to get and we’ve done that through tourism.

New companies can’t focus on sustainability in a meaningful manner because they’re too small and it takes so much effort to start a new business. We went 20 years before we really started to get into sustainable tourism. We were just keeping the ship alive.

Skift: How has your competition evolved over the company’s existence?

Kent: With the new Internet and everything else that we have today, everybody can see exactly what we do. A lot of people copy our itineraries. Actually, our biggest competitor is the Internet; however, I’m trying to use it with my brand.

I feel sort of liberated again because I can go back to doing all of these exciting off-the-beaten-track trips. Travelers can do normal trips to Paris off the Internet. We’re going back to our roots, to the unusual thing because nobody is going to book one of my trips on their own on the Internet.

Skift: Another aspect of the Internet is social media, which is very visually oriented. Abercrombie & Kent also started with this focus on photography. How was the rise of social media impacted the trips and how are you using it as a marketing channel?

Kent: Well it’s much easier today because customers aren’t knocking each other with wide lenses. These phones are amazing and they’ve made our life much easier. We’ve also trained all our guys to understand the iPhone.

For marketing, we think social media is going to be one of the key areas. We recently took Tiffany Dowd on our big jet trip around the world and received 7 million impressions.

Every day hundreds of thousands of people would get a picture on Instagram. How could you do that 30 years ago? Everybody trusts the brand. I value this brand and think about it every day.

Skift: As travelers seek out more authentic experiences, do you see any pushback on the luxury element of your trips? Do customers want to live more like locals during their stay?

Kent: I sit with clients who tell me that they want to have a really authentic trip, that they want to live in villages with local people. I look them in the eye and tell them, “That’s what you think you want, but you don’t want it. I promise you.” They’re screaming within two days. I tell them to visit for a day, have that experience, and then always come back to warm, comfortable accommodations.

Skift: Which destinations are seeing the greatest growth in demand?

Kent: Myanmar is the fastest-growing right now and South Africa is really booming. The problem with Africa is that it always gets a bad knock for nothing. When the Ebola crisis happened, everybody said it was in Africa and I had to tell them that London is much closer to Nigeria than Cape Town.

Skift: How was your business impacted by those events?

Kent: We were impacted very badly for three months. People stopped booking and cancelled trips. There’s a lack of geographical knowledge in all of this. We’re driven by ridiculous emotions most of the time.

Skift: How much of an impact do geopolitical events have on your business?

Kent: A huge impact. We’re affected everywhere. I compare the company to a 12-cylinder Ferrari. Three or four can go out but I’ll still have eight left. I’ve worked every day to build this brand, which is to say that we’re actually not a safari operator. We sell the most incredible luxury holidays on Earth. If Kenya is off, the cylinder breaks down, then customers will come to us and ask where to go.

Skift: What’s next? Given your experience in travel industry, what trends do you see in the pipeline for the next 10 years?

Kent: People are going to get more adventurous over the next 10 years. More people are going to have their lives changed by travel. People are going to want to have their lives changed like how we do it – great guides, very unusual places.

Skift: What about the negative impacts of tourism? How does the industry overcome the environmental and cultural impact of tourism growth?

Kent: This is one of my favorite subjects. I’m always charged with being very elite and having a very elitist concept of tourism. My concept is that destinations should go for minimum impact and maximum yield. This is what I did with the gorillas in Uganda. Only a certain number of licenses are issued a day; it brings in millions of dollars and nothing happens to the forest. It’s OK if it takes someone three years to book to see a gorilla. Machu Picchu should have done the same thing and upped the price. The minute that you do it, you’re accused of elitism.

I was a student once and I would have been livid if I had been asked to pay to go to South Africa. Somewhere along the line, there should be a limit on people visiting a place, whether there are x number of passes for students or people who can’t afford it. Then you have more room for people who will pay more, which benefits the community.

Skift: How do you prohibit people from seeing something that has the ability to change their lives?

Kent: You can’t really, but the fact is that there are way too many vehicles all over the world. What I will argue is whoever comes, there should be some money that goes to the community. I don’t care whether it’s out of every dollar there should be an amount.

Skift: You recently introduced a luxury jet product. Where did this come from?

Kent: Steve Jobs’ book is amazing and I’ve read it twice. The biggest takeaway for me was when he said, “You can only build a company by developing and owning your own product. Good service alone will not build a brand.” What I’ve been working on for years was good service. I built the tent safari product, which was very hard to imitate for a long time. The Internet wasn’t around for a long time and I had a 15 year lead on everybody.

Now we have the Internet and you can “unbundle” prices. The worst word in my life is “unbundle.” I cannot stand the word, because you have to give a breakdown of all the prices. Then there’s no profit left. We give customers a price then they ask us to unbundle it and then they compare it on the Internet. Unbundling is a horrible thing for our business. I said to myself three years ago that I had to find a product that nobody in the world could unbundle.

I expanded Sanctuary Retreats then I came up with Land Rover Adventures and now there are the private jet trips. I wanted to re-create what I did in those camps 52 years ago – ultra-luxury travel to the most unusual places on earth. The itinerary includes Miami, the Amazon in Peru, Easter Island, Samoa, Papua New Guinea where you’re seeing amazing birds of paradise, Bali where we see Komodo dragons and go diving, Sri Lanka, Madagascar, Kenya, and Monaco. All of these are going to be so hard to put together that a normal person could not do it. They could never unbundle it.

]]>http://skift.com/2015/02/02/interview-abercrombie-kent-ceo-on-inventing-experiential-travel/feed/0AAbercrombie & KentIt Was a Record Year for Poaching Rhinos in South Africa in 2014http://skift.com/2015/01/25/it-was-a-record-year-for-poaching-rhinos-in-south-africa-in-2014/
http://skift.com/2015/01/25/it-was-a-record-year-for-poaching-rhinos-in-south-africa-in-2014/#commentsSun, 25 Jan 2015 15:00:48 +0000http://skift.com/?p=146709]]>

Poachers killed 1,215 rhinos for their horns in South Africa in 2014, another record loss as the country struggles to protect the animals.

A majority of the pachyderms, 827, were slaughtered in Kruger National Park, a nature reserve the size of Israel that borders on Mozambique, the Department of Environmental Affairs said in a statement today in Pretoria. A total of 1,004 were killed throughout the country in 2013.

“The very reason most of the world’s rhino continue to exist in the wild today is because of the efforts of South Africa,” Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa told reporters in Pretoria. So far in 2015, 49 rhinos have been poached in South Africa. The country made 386 arrests in 2014.

Rhino horn demand has climbed in Asian nations including China and Vietnam because of a belief that they can cure diseases such as cancer. The price of the horns, more valuable than gold by weight, may range from $65,000 to as much as $95,000 per kilogram in Asia.

In the last quarter of 2014, 56 rhino were moved from poaching hotspots and 100 of the animals were trans-located to neighboring states, the ministry said.

South Africa, which is home to more than 90 percent of world’s white rhinos, set up a protection zone within the Kruger National Park, implemented new equipment, and relocated the animals to safer areas. It’s also considering advocating legalizing global rhino-horn trade. Authorities in 2014 made a record number of arrests for poaching activity.

White rhinos, the bigger of the two types of the animal found in Africa, can weigh more than 2 metric tons. About 40 percent of black rhinos are in South Africa, according to the Save the Rhino charity.

This article was written by Paul Burkhardt from Bloomberg and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

Skift Take: You would think that a military dictatorship would create an atmosphere of openness that would allow mistakes to be openly acknowledged and properly rectified. Or not, as in this case.

— Jason Clampet

The blue and gold braided beard on the burial mask of famed pharaoh Tutankhamun was hastily glued back on with epoxy, damaging the relic after it was knocked during cleaning, conservators at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo said Wednesday.

The museum is one of the city’s main tourist sites, but in some areas, ancient wooden sarcophagi lay unprotected from the public, while pharaonic burial shrouds, mounted on walls, crumble from behind open panels of glass. Tutankhamun’s mask, over 3,300 years old, and other contents of his tomb are its top exhibits.

Three of the museum’s conservators reached by telephone gave differing accounts of when the incident occurred last year, and whether the beard was knocked off by accident while the mask’s case was being cleaned, or was removed because it was loose.

They agree however that orders came from above to fix it quickly and that an inappropriate adhesive was used. All spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of professional reprisals.

“Unfortunately he used a very irreversible material — epoxy has a very high property for attaching and is used on metal or stone but I think it wasn’t suitable for an outstanding object like Tutankhamun’s golden mask,” one conservator said.

“The mask should have been taken to the conservation lab but they were in a rush to get it displayed quickly again and used this quick drying, irreversible material,” the conservator added.

The conservator said that the mask now shows a gap between the face and the beard, whereas before it was directly attached: “Now you can see a layer of transparent yellow.”

Another museum conservator, who was present at the time of the repair, said that epoxy had dried on the face of the boy king’s mask and that a colleague used a spatula to remove it, leaving scratches. The first conservator, who inspects the artifact regularly, confirmed the scratches and said it was clear that they had been made by a tool used to scrape off the epoxy.

Egypt’s tourist industry, once a pillar of the economy, has yet to recover from three years of tumult following a 2011 uprising that toppled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Museums and the opening of new tombs are part of plans to revive the industry. But authorities have made no significant improvements to the Egyptian Museum since its construction in 1902, and plans to move the Tutankhamun exhibit to its new home in the Grand Egyptian Museum scheduled to open in 2018 have yet to be divulged.

Neither the Antiquities Ministry nor the museum administration could be reached for comment Wednesday evening. One of the conservators said an investigation was underway and that a meeting had been held on the subject earlier in the day.

The burial mask, discovered by British archeologists Howard Carter and George Herbert in 1922, sparked worldwide interest in archaeology and ancient Egypt when it was unearthed along with Tutankhamun’s nearly intact tomb.

“From the photos circulating among restorers I can see that the mask has been repaired, but you can’t tell with what,” Egyptologist Tom Hardwick said. “Everything of that age needs a bit more attention, so such a repair will be highly scrutinized.”

Copyright (2015) Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

This article was written by Brian Rohan from The Associated Press and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

]]>http://skift.com/2015/01/25/king-tut-losing-his-beard-is-cairos-latest-tourist-setback/feed/0AAssociated PressMuch of the World Is Now on Sale for American Touristshttp://skift.com/2015/01/06/much-of-the-world-is-now-on-sale-for-american-tourists/
http://skift.com/2015/01/06/much-of-the-world-is-now-on-sale-for-american-tourists/#commentsTue, 06 Jan 2015 10:00:58 +0000http://skift.com/?p=146002

Tourists take pictures in front of Rome's ancient Colosseum. A strong U.S. dollar is making world travel cheaper for Americans in 2015. Gregorio Borgia / Associated Press

Skift Take: This is kind of good news for Americans who remember a stronger dollar. But it's important to remember that those on the receiving end of the poor exchange rate aren't loving the deals.

— Jason Clampet

If you’ve been putting off a trip abroad because it’s too expensive, start packing your bags.

A stronger dollar has reduced the price of travel, from a hotel room to a glass of beer, in much of Europe, Japan, India and elsewhere.

“This is one of the best times for Americans to travel in years,” says Matt Kepnes, author of “How to Travel the World on $50 a Day” and other travel books.

Why the Dollar Is Strong

Other economies are shaky, making their currencies less valuable. Europe is barely growing. Japan is already officially in recession. China’s growth has slowed. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy has been chugging along, and the dollar has gained too. Many economists expect that steady U.S. growth will compel the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates later this year, making dollar investments more attractive and leading traders to sell other currencies and buy dollars.

What It Means

Let’s say that in June you had a charming dinner for two in Paris for 75 euros. First, congratulations. Second, it cost $103 then; today it would be $89. Expensive countries may not be cheap, but at least they’re more affordable now.

Thanks to the pound’s decline, England is cheaper than it was six months ago. But the euro has slumped more, making most of continental Europe an even better bargain. Travel writer Kepnes says Greece is attractive right now because hotels and tour operators have been slashing prices to fill rooms. The same thing is happening in Portugal and parts of Spain.

“Be the contrarian traveler,” Kepnes says. “If you want to go to Europe, consider eastern or central Europe, where prices are generally cheaper,” he says. He recommends going during the “shoulder season” — late spring or early fall — rather than in the peak summer season.

Demand for travel is so strong that most airlines don’t have to cut prices to sell seats.

“The summer fares are still very expensive,” says George Hobica, founder of travel website airfarewatchdog.com. But airlines might cut prices this spring if the strong dollar discourages Europeans and Asians from flying to and from the U.S.

Hobica recommends checking foreign airlines. He says Etihad, Qatar Airways, Turkish Airlines and others sometimes offer better prices to Europe than U.S. carriers do, although they could include a distant stopover.

AP Markets Writer Matthew Craft in New York contributed to this report.

People scramble for safety as armed police hunt gunmen who went on a shooting spree at Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi, September 21, 2013. Goran Tomasevic / Reuters

Skift Take: Kenya's inability to deal with the militants head on, while also trying to maintain a happy face to the outside world, has proven to be a failure.

— Jason Clampet

Growth in Kenya’s economy, the largest in East Africa, slowed in the third quarter as the tourism industry contracted following a spate of attacks carried out by Islamist militants.

Gross domestic product rose 5.5 percent on an annual basis from July to September compared with 5.7 percent the quarter earlier, the Nairobi-based Kenya National Bureau of Statistics said today in an e-mailed statement. That compares with expansion of 6.6 percent in the third quarter of last year.

Output from the accommodation and restaurants category shrank 14.6 percent from a year earlier, with the industry contracting for the seventh straight quarter.

Tourism has been affected by gun and grenade attacks in the country, mainly claimed by al-Qaeda’s Somalia-based affiliate, al-Shabaab. The militants have said the assaults, including a raid last year on a shopping mall in the capital, Nairobi, that left at least 67 people dead, are revenge for Kenya deploying troops in Somalia to help defeat the fighters.

Kenya in September revised its calculation for GDP, increasing the size of the economy by 25 percent to $55.2 billion last year, rising to lower middle-income status. The economy is forecast by the government to expand 7 percent in the fiscal year beginning in July from 6.1 percent in 2014-15.

Agriculture, which accounts for about a fifth of economic output, rose by 6.2 percent in the third quarter on a yearly basis, while financial services increased 9.9 percent, the statistics agency said. Seasonally adjusted GDP rose 5.3 percent compared with 6.1 percent from April and June.

Flags fly outside a bar in Cape Town during the 2010 World Cup. Anne Fröhlich / Flickr

Skift Take: Many African countries are ripe for tourism innovation; however, it will take on-the-ground product development in addition to smart marketing campaign to shift travelers' perceptions and drive bookings.

— Samantha Shankman

African has recently been lauded as the next Asia, the next region in which tourism and hospitality companies will sprout up to cater to a growing number of inbound visitors that bring an economic boost alongside unintended environmental and geopolitical effects.

One of the first steps to getting there; however, begins with image: The brands that African countries build and how potential visitors approach them.

Only a handful of African countries; however, are effectively building a branding strategy and reaping the rewards of those efforts.

This is according to Bloom Consulting, a Madrid-based consulting firm specializing in country branding, which each year ranks 193 countries on the economic performance of their tourism industries and how well they’ve developed their brand strategies each year.

The methodology factors in hard and soft data in an effort to show the correlation between tourism receipts and effective branding.

Rankings are based on (1) economic performance measured in tourism receipts over the past five years; (2) total online search volume for tourism-related activities and attractions within each country; (3) how accurately a country’s brand strategy reflects what the country has to offer to tourists; and (4) digital content and social media performance.

South African claimed the number one spot from Egypt this year for obvious reasons while Egypt, surprisingly, remained at the number two spot.

The report cites the country’s political instability, a decrease in tourism receipts, weak branding strategy, and negative online presence for its fall from the number one spot. Those myriad of factors seem fitting for a much larger fall.

Kenya, Tanzania, and Morocco consistently remain among the top branded countries given a steady base of wealthy safari and nature tourists that keep tourism receipts high and branding clear.

Zimbabwe and Sudan jumped five and six positions, respectively, given significant growth in their tourism receipts. On the other hand, Mauritius and Botswana experienced drastic drops in tourism receipts amid increased competition from their neighbors.

Several destinations showed an increase in brand acumen. Ethiopia, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Seychelles have benefitted from growing reputations as “trendy new tourist destinations;” however, all of countries’ advances were considered stagnant in comparison.

Their growth overshadows the relative stagnant advances of other African countries considered in the report and Bloom’s forecast for the coming year remains dim.

“Bloom Consulting forecasts that a stagnancy and a reduction in positions
for the rest of the African Nations will occour in the next edition of the Country
Brand ranking as lower numbers of Europeans will travel due to economic
limitations, security issues and the Ebola crisis,” the report reads.

The ranking of the twelve top country brands are below alongside their CBS rating, which Bloom designates based on the accuracy and effectiveness of each country’s brand strategy.

“White House Summit on Study Abroad and Global Citizenship,” is a one-day event at the organized by Hosteling International and the Global Engagement Directorate division of the National Security Council to promote initiates that encourage students and educators to visit emerging markets in Asia and Africa. It is being held at the Executive Office Building (next door to the White House) and the National Press Club.

“[The White House] is making a big push for students to study in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia,” Shannon Green, the National Security Council’s senior director for global engagement, told Skift. “We’re really going to try to make the economic case for studying in these countries, because companies these days need people who have the international exposure. There are countries who have invested and who want to invest in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, and they’re looking for students who have experience in these regions.”

Hostelling International CEO Russ Hedge wrote earlier this week that the event would “be a big step towards conveying the transformative power of travel to the public and encouraging young adults to explore other places and cultures and become better global citizens.”

The line-up of speakers for the day includes Penny Pritzker, Secretary of Commerce, Department of Commerce (whose family also owns the Hyatt Hotel chain), Samantha Brown and Don Wildman from the Travel Channel, and National Geographic Digital Nomad Robert Reid.

The travel writers and bloggers gathered in D.C. began tweeting and blogging about the event as soon as the invitationsbeganarriving, and carried on through a pre-party (above) organized by the Travel Massive networking group the evening before the event.

Skift Take: It's a sad reality, but in a world where tourism to east Africa has dropped because of tourism concerns, playing hardball in an effort to make tourist-feeding nations happy isn't the worst idea.

— Jason Clampet

Morocco’s Tourism Minister said the decision by the African soccer authority to strip his country of hosting regional championships is a blessing.

CAF, the regional soccer body, said yesterday it won’t let Morocco host the Africa Cup of Nations, scheduled for Jan. 17 through Feb. 8, because Morocco had wanted to postpone the 16- team event by up to a year because of concerns about Ebola. The disease, which is spread through body fluids, has led to about 5,000 deaths, mainly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

“We were chuffed,” Tourism Minister Lahcen Haddad said in a phone interview from his office in Rabat today. “It strengthens our image on behalf of tour operators and the industry as a secure and safe destination. I applaud and support this. This was a good decision.”

Morocco was relatively untouched by the uprisings that swept through the region in 2011 and battered tourism in Tunisia and Egypt. The sector accounts for about 10 percent of Morocco’s $105 billion economy, second to agriculture, and employs 400,000 people. After a 7 percent rise in 2013, tourist arrivals were up only 2 percent by end September, while receipts rose 1.9 percent to about 45 billion dirhams ($5 million).

State-controlled airline Royal Air Maroc is one of two airlines still serving the three African countries most affected by the disease. Authorities stepped up screening and health control measures at Casablanca airport where some 300 passengers land each day from those countries. The World Health Organization said Nov. 7 it wasn’t advising governments to ban travel or trade, even from Ebola-affected countries.

The pan-Africa soccer competition wasn’t going to be a big draw anyway, according to Mohamed Abu Basha, an economist at EFG-Hermes, a Cairo-based investment bank.

It’s “not the FIFA World Cup where people come from across the board to attend it,” he said. “It is obviously a much smaller scale event with few tourists moving around to attend. Egypt organized it in 2006 and I can’t really see that it had much of a positive impact on the economy.”

CAF, Confederation Africaine de Football, is selecting new new hosts.

To contact the reporter on this story: Souhail Karam in Rabat at skaram5@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tarek El-Tablawy at teltablawy@bloomberg.net.

Anthony Bourdain explores the Serengeti and Zanzibar on a trip to Tanzania. CNN Parts Unknown

Skift Take: After all these years, Bourdain is still willing to wade into the unknown and put anything in his mouth for the sake of experiencing new culture. That's what differentiates him from most others that tiptoe around the outside of a new place.

— Samantha Shankman

Anthony Bourdain travels from the seas to the mountains of Tanzania in last Sunday’s episode of CNN’s Parts Unknown. His journey starts in Zanzibar, the small island-nation, which is technically part of the mainland country. The majority of the population is Muslim and its influence is felt throughout the culture. In addition to its beaches, Zanzibar is also known for its street food.

Snacks include Swahili donuts, fried lentil fitters, and beef and chicken kebabs sold by vendors and frequented often by locals. Zanzibar culture mandates that friends buy the street snacks for one another making 30-kebab purchases a common occurrence.

Bourdain then flies across the country to Arusha near Mount Kilimanjaro on his way to the Serengeti. He stays at a luxurious 5-star lodge where he describes the combination of “idyllic natural setting and good plumbing as pretty much paradise.”

Bourdain spends a good portion of the episode with local Masai. He dives head first into their culture, sipping on a chunky yogurt-like drink, and he drinks blood directly from a slaughtered goat. He travels around with a local guide and sees the expansive wildlife that attracts $1.5 billion in tourism every year.